No matter how many times I explained all this, the same question kept coming, over and over. ‘Why do you care so much?’ All I could say was: ‘Why do you not?’
The intercession of the most famous children’s writer in the world in the trans debate was a moment when I thought the argument would shift decisively in my direction. So beloved were the Harry Potter books, so impeccable were J. K. Rowling’s socialist credentials, so compelling her backstory, she would be listened to.
But no, not a bit of it. HMS Rowling – which had piped on board generations of children, and taught them to read for their pleasure and then for their children’s pleasure – was deserted faster than a plague ship, so taboo were the author’s perfectly commonplace views on women’s rights.
The young actors from the Harry Potter series of films instantly betrayed her. If I were a star who had never shown any ability to act past the pre-pubescent level that got me into the business, I’d be keeping my head down, not signing statements insinuating that my old mentor was a bigot.
Those actors – Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint – deserve to be remembered as symbols of the most remarkable arrogance, cowardice and ingratitude. But asking what Rowling actually said that was so terrible produces nothing. You’ve never seen a transphobic statement from J. K. Rowling because none exists.
I am not a great admirer of Linehan but he is broadly right and his article is well worth reading.
Although I think the treatment of Ms. Rowling has been insane, I don’t agree with his thoughts on the three actors. You can be grateful to someone without agreeing with them about everything. How many of us love our parents and appreciate what they have done for us, but disagree (Sometimes publicly) about some of their views.
Nonetheless, there is an upside to this. It is clear evidence that they eat their own. Each outcompeting the other on ideological purity, and before too long they disappear down a sinkhole of self loathing.
Whenever a celebrity makes a political statement, Cpt. America actor Chris Evans being in the tank for Hillary for example, I always assume there is a “you’ll never work in this town again” phone call behind it.
Never believe the media -including the internet – when something has had as long to fester as the Rowling mess. But I seem to remember, when this all started, some woman had asserted that there were men and there were women, and had gotten fired for it. And Rowling said nobody should be fired for saying something that commonplace.
Then the flames began.
I agree with Fraser Orr, i would not use the term ingratitude, you can think differently than someone that treated you well. The problem is the totalitarian behaviour those actors displayed, they wanted to unperson her.
She is a socialist so i would not be surprised she defended something similar to someone else.
End question: if she would have less money would a British leftist political bank expel her?
We’re not speaking of someone disagreeing with someone else. We’re speaking of someone denigrating their benefactor, ridiculing them, making sure that the world knows that you would never hold such hateful unprogressive views as this monster.
They were utter shits about the entire controversy. Which was made worse by them being entirely in the wrong.
I have little sympathy for Rowling.
Firstly, the fact that she shoehorned “teh gay” into her series with such… (sarcasm alert) Finesse…? Yeah, that’s the way she did it… Smoothly, naturally, like we needed to know that there were Serious Gay characters. At the last minute, ya know, ‘cos she’d never mentioned any of it with Dumbledore.
What’s the opposite of Chekhov’s Gun, in writing? Some say that’s the “Red Herring”, a bit of purposeful misdirection. But, Dumbledore’s sudden coming out of the closet isn’t even that; there’s no point to it, other than pandering to “teh Gay” community.
Having done that, she’s suddenly a hero to the gay community and all right-thinking sorts… Right up until the trans thing. Which I have to credit her for, but… Jeez. Dumbledore? Really?
That whole thing just reeks of “I’m so politically correct I squeak when the Party wants me to…”, and I find it hard to sympathize with the woman when she suddenly discovers a limit to her pandering. If she’d simply said “Hey, these are kid’s books, we’re not doing kinky sex in them…”, that’d be one thing. But, having decided that Dumbledore was “teh Gay” ‘cos she’d forgotten to address that shibboleth, and had to shoehorn something in?
Not feeling a whit of either sympathy or concern for her. She’s being taken down by friendly fire, and it’s well-deserved in my mind. Amusing, too, because I really don’t see all that much in her writing that’s really all that good. It’s like she did a pact with Satan, and he made her the world’s most popular author, for tripe and derivative tripe, at that. There are rather more cliches in Harry Potter books than I can stand, and the whole thing is just not that good. As a kid, I seriously doubt I’d have picked any of her books up, other than out of curiosity to see what the fuss was all about. Of course, I was reading the real stuff at around nine, when I first found The Lord of the Rings and Dune… I don’t think I was ever the target market for her sort of work.
The most savage part for me is that the vast majority of people agree with him, because he is right, but those around him chose cowardice in the face of a screeching minority of activists. Had everyone just carried on as normal and ignored the trannie activists, then they would have been screeching into the void with no one taking any notice. The power they have is the power the cowards grant them.
This is a useful reminder that the left are NOT all the same – J.K. Rowling has been a Labour Party supporter all her life, but the lady is not a Frankfurt School Marxist, she does not want to reduce society to ashes and dried blood by pushing “Critical Theory” racial and sexual groups (including the Trans cult on to children) – tragically, and bizarrely, Big Business (the vast Corporations going all the way up to BlackRock and these other Federal Reserve supported entities) have decided to support Frankfurt School “Critical Theory” Marxism – are actively trying to destroy what is left of Western society.
Fraser Orr – the “three actors” say what they are told to say, and do what they are told to do, independent minded human beings can not survive in Corporate Hollywood, indeed in the Credit Money supported world of vast Corporations generally. Again these vast, Credit Money supported, Corporations are pushing Frankfurt School “Critical Theory” Marxism – they are actively trying to destroy what is left of Western society.
Corporate managers are produced by the same education system (schools and universities) that produces modern American government officials, and intellectually corrupt judges – an education system that is rotten to the core.
Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are actors and work in a precarious trade. So ‘going with the flow’ of their peers’ attitudes helps ensure they continue to get work and are proposed for awards. Quite understandable but not particularly worthy.
Which is why I don’t bother with any celebrity speaking words of wisdom (whether I agree, or more likely, not). I don’t watch the BAFTAs or the OSCARs or any other trade awards show.
Sure, whatever, but the merits of the players in this scrum from a non-left POV aren’t really the point. You don’t like Rowling. It’s clear our host ain’t that keen on Graham Linehan either for reasons that aren’t hard to guess for long time readers of Samizdata. Linehan was happy to throw Count Dankula & his Pug who wants to annex the Sudetenland under a bus. But Linehan’s right on this issue & his observations are telling: that in spite of ticking all the right-on Leftie boxes, being manifestly correct & pointing out what this means for women didn’t count for spit.
I was never fond of Linehan or Rowling before the tranny madness descended but that does not matter. They are both right and brave in standing up for women and indeed reality. I will buy Linehan’s book in support (I reckon Rowling’s probably OK for cash).
Linehan behaved atrociously towards Dankula. However he has since made effusive and IMHO sincere public apologies. Unlike the left, we can or rather should be willing to accept them.
I won’t go all “sinner repenteth” but he needs support and high profile figures with the bottle to take on the trans-blob are too few and far between to neglect.
John’s remarks exactly mirror my own sentiments. Linehan does seem to have grasped how wrong he was re. Dankula, so as they said in Casablanca, welcome to the fight.
@Kirk
Firstly, the fact that she shoehorned “teh gay” into her series with such… (sarcasm alert) Finesse…? Yeah, that’s the way she did it… Smoothly, naturally, like we needed to know that there were Serious Gay characters. At the last minute, ya know, ‘cos she’d never mentioned any of it with Dumbledore.
That’s not true at all. Dumbledore’s gayness is an important story point even if it isn’t explicitly stated in the original seven books directly. Namely it explains his complex relationship with Grindelwald, which is a very important theme in the last book. I’m sure you understand that one hallmark of good fiction is that underlying, themes not explicitly mentioned, can have an impact of the story line. You cannot read the relationship of Dumbledore and Grindelwald without wondering what the nature of it is. You are welcome to be hostile to the idea that there are gay people in the world and they sometimes play a part, and sometimes their sexuality affects the way they behave. But your view is both unnatural (homosexuality is common in many, many mammalian species) and hostile to a very large portion of humans.
Fraser, “my view”? Don’t think I really stated one, vis-a-vis homosexuality. What I’m expressing disdain for is Rowling’s writing and the whole “Gotta have a gay character” late in the series sudden conversion.
One, it wasn’t necessary for her to state it. Two, it doesn’t feel “right” for the character: Up to the point of her “revelation”, you really didn’t get a feel that that sort of thing was going on with Dumbledore or Grindlewald; you could have easily read that whole thing as really good male friends from college that had zero sexual component to it. It was entirely extraneous, and purposeless inclusion of sex, and deviant sex at that. For what purpose? None that I can see.
You set out to write porn? Fine. Write porn; sex is an integral part of that, going back to Ovid. You want to write a kids series? Why the hell do you feel the need to inject that crap, especially the way the rest of the series has, up until that last bit, totally ignored it?
Don’t have a particular brief against gays in general, but I do find the constant activist “everything and everyone is gay” BS more than a little annoying. Where it was once “the love that dare not mention it’s name”, it has become “the love that won’t shut up and leave the rest of us alone”.
And, frankly? I’m tired of it. All of it. This crap is all of a piece with the jackasses selling thong panties for pre-teens; hypersexualizing the young. And, Rowling was on-board with it, or she wouldn’t have done it. There was no damn point to suddenly, at the 11th hour, making Dumbledore gay. Only to pander to “the community”, to great applause. Only when the second- and third-order implications of that came clear did she start to go “Hey, waitaminute… I don’t want some six-foot five trans man with a dick in my bathroom…”
You buy into and support the initial proposition, in my book? Without bothering to examine the likely outcomes and implications? You own it all, down to the final fifth-order denouement.
I agree with what Bulldog Drummond wrote.
@Kirk
Fraser, “my view”? Don’t think I really stated one, vis-a-vis homosexuality.
Your view shines through in everything you write, including in this very comment where you describe homosexual relations as deviant, and writing about them as porn. And you most certainly could not read the relationship with Grindelwald as “really good male friends from college.” FFS, they write love letters to each other.
You want to write a kids series? Why the hell do you feel the need to inject that crap, especially the way the rest of the series has, up until that last bit, totally ignored it?
Why is it crap? Just because you evidently think homosexual sex is evil and deviant. You are very much in the minority on that view.
And FWIW, getting back to trans-people. I think if trans people want to cross dress or adjust their bodies surgically or with drugs, then that is their business not mine. Whatever makes them happy. My sense is that transsexuality comes from a different place than homosexuality (which seems mostly genetic), but I could be wrong. My only objections are to the invasion of women’s spaces, the attack on children and the demands they place on language and relations that the more extreme activists are engaged in.
Never heard of Graham Linehan before.
From a cursory look at his article at the link, it seems to me that (if you’ll allow me to be provocative) his problem is not being Marxist enough: he does not seem to realize that trans-activists (as distinct from transgender people) are the henchmen of the ruling class.
(Also, he does not seem to appreciate the amount of brain damage that can result from the sort of food that Anglo-American “progressives” eat.)
Fraser, you’re willfully ignoring my equal disdain for heterosexual sexual deviants. Anybody who wraps their entire life around their “sexual identity” and gratifying same? Doesn’t matter what orientation they have, they’re still nuts, still dangerous, and a general menace to healthy society.
I’d put the parents of toddler beauty pageant queens like JonBenet Ramsey right up there alongside the rest of the weirdoes advocating for and convincing confused teenagers to mutilate their bodies. It’s all deviant, all unhealthy, and all things that should be out of the public commons. You have issues with your sexuality? Keep ’em to yourself. I’ve got no problems with that part of the homosexual community where you find yourself going “Wait… What? John’s married to a guy…? Huh. Who knew…?”, the sort of people that aren’t being consciously transgressive to piss off the world. The ones who do go out of their way to be transgressive about their sexuality? Gay, straight, male, female, whatever… They’re the ones I have issues with, whether it’s the local married Lothario who’s screwing everything female in sight, or the local married slut who can’t keep her knees together. All of them belong in the same class of “sexual deviant”, because that sort of behavior is not only “not normal”, it’s also destructive to others and the society around them. Kid gets molested? That leaves you picking up the pieces, and if you’re real lucky, you won’t wind up having created another Jeffery Dahmer or whatever. Same-same with the kid growing up in the house where it’s a known thing that Mommy jumps on every penis she encounters, or Daddy can’t keep his zipper up; the kids wind up damaged, and that damage reverberates down the generations. You give into your desire for sexual gratification today, then the ripples move out from there and God alone knows where they end.
I’ve really got no time at all for any of these people, whether they’re the leather harness-clad types running amok in the city streets while I’m taking the nieces and nephews somewhere, or whatever other perversion people get up to. You want to do that kind of thing? Keep it to yourself; the rest of us aren’t here as bit players in your psychodrama.
And, that’s really my major break with Rowling: There was absolutely zero indication with Dumbledore about his sexuality until she parachuted that into the later books as an afterthought kiss-ass to the “activists” complaining about a lack of gay characters. Hell, I know a couple of gays that expressed outrage and disdain over the artificiality of the whole thing, the obvious epic shoehorning job she did. That she’s later getting excoriated by the trans community is just… Weirdly karmic.
General reading kids books should be written in such a way that the ins and outs of sexual gratification aren’t even mentioned. If you go out and actually examine a lot of what they’re pushing, these days, it’s pretty obvious what a put-up job the majority of it is, sheer propaganda for the sexually-obsessed. If you’ve got a screaming need to discuss “your sexuality” with fifth-graders, it’s my contention that you don’t belong in teaching, especially if you’re going to proselytize for your particular deviancy.
Care to imagine how fast you’d be in jail, were you a “cis-normal” adult male talking to fifth-grade girls about their sexual organs and how best to gratify them, outside a classroom?
Funny, that: It’s A-OK for teachers and others to do it, but were you to, say, wander down to the local park and do the same? Yeah; straight to jail. Which is where all the kiddy-diddlers belong, gay, straight, trans, whatever… Leave the kids alone, let them figure things out on their own. They ask questions, let their sane parents answer them. Proselytizing is straight out, for anyone else.
I can’t wait to see the raft of psych issues that are going to come out of these decades. Just like the German leftist arseholes that turned homeless kids over to sexual predators, or any of those other brilliant ideas like sexualizing the kindergartens. I’ve known people that were warped for the rest of their lives by that crap, and the amount of damage they do to others later in life is not something to be sneered at.
I didn’t arrive where I’m at with this stuff either by accident or due to innate prejudice; when I was 20, I’d say I was pretty open to everything and tolerant to a fault. After a lifetime of practical experience dealing with the fallout from this crap? I’m of a totally different mind. Frankly, I’d put the sorry bastards that cheat on their wives up against the wall, right next to the kiddy-diddlers. In the end, they do about as much damage to the innocent, it’s just a different sort.
Things that have changed my mind RE: the position of “rights of the sexually deviant” in society:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2023/10/02/why-was-a-violent-gender-confused-boy-allowed-to-stay-in-portland-school-after-beating-up-girls-n1731529
Note who is defending this thug. The established “alternative sexuality activist”, who sees no problem in a much larger person beating the crap out of someone smaller.
I’ll also guarantee you that the sexual frisson this character gets from beating those girls up is probably pretty intense; what is going on here, like in so many of these cases, is that the predator has figured out that they can get away with their activities so long as they take up the socially-approved camouflage of “transgender” and then do what they please.
This is the wages of “tolerance and understanding”. The reality here? The sexually-obsessed are mentally ill. Catering to their needs, and warping society around their varied and sundry mental illnesses surrounding their sexuality is a huge mistake, one that those badly beaten girls are paying for. And, guess what? You think they’re not going to take lessons from this, to pass on down the years to others…?
Like as not, they’re going to go on to victimize others, thanks to the “tolerance and love” enabling their transsexual abuser. Who knows who they’re going to victimize, warp, and perpetrate this crap on even further? Every single one of the criminal sexual deviants that I’ve encountered personally had something like this in their history; they were victims themselves, long before they were perpetrators. You don’t put an end to this crap by enabling “the weird”; all you do is make it easier for them to pass their issues on to other innocent victims.
You want a decent case study for why I have come to believe these “terrible things” about much of the LGBTWTFBBQ contingent? Go look up the reality behind the sainted Marion Zimmer Bradley and her husband Walter Breen. Those two committed more acts of depravity in the name of their sexual gratification than you could believe, and did it all cloaked in the nobility of their observer’s “tolerance and love”.
Bastards both should have been shot, out of hand, after the first victims came forward. Instead, lionized and excused by one and all, because “Genius”.
You can say what you like about Rowling, but the Ickebog is a fantastic introductory tale to the perils of big governance.
Quite so, as pointed out in this parish and environs many times, such as by Natalie and Brian.
@Kirk
Fraser, you’re willfully ignoring my equal disdain for heterosexual sexual deviants. Anybody who wraps their entire life around their “sexual identity” and gratifying same? Doesn’t matter what orientation they have, they’re still nuts, still dangerous, and a general menace to healthy society.
That isn’t what you did at all — you equated homosexuality with sexual deviancy and writing about it as porn. The vast majority of gay people are like Dumbledore… regular people (if you can put aside the whole wizard thing), just living their lives, doing their jobs. You’d never know they were gay for the most part. Which, ironically, is one of your complaints about how Rowling writes him. My next door neighbor is a very nice man. I only know he is gay because I got talking to his boyfriend in the front yard one time. The vast majority of gay people are people who happen to be gay, not gay’s who happen to be people.
So wriggle and justify all you want. Your views on this matter shine through any time you post on a vaguely related subject. I find such views pretty vile, and they deserve to be called out on a forum of sensible, thinking people as you find here.
Your comments tend to be a bit TL;DR, so you might have said something useful elsewhere, but I can’t get past the first sentence usually.
Fraser –
Dumbledore, a regular person just living his life, doing his jobs? (I laugh like a hyena.) I read fanfiction, and whatever you think about that, it’s an excellent way of seeing what the writers think about the characters they adopt. Most stories with Dumbledore bash him – sometimes as an idiot who tries to be in charge of everything, and sometimes an evil idiot who tries to be in charge of everything. He has three jobs, and it keeps him so busy he doesn’t do a one of them properly. And the things he does to and about Harry Potter are abominable. Either he intends it, doesn’t care, or doesn’t know. None of these are very forgivable.
Dumbledore is not a regular person. And it hasn’t got a thing to do with his sexuality. If I were trying to find a similar person, previously mentioned in this post, I’d go with Kirk’s “parents of toddler beauty pageant queens like JonBenet Ramsey.” “Stage mother” is an apt description for Dumbledore. Drama queen by proxy.
I have to agree with Ellen… Dumbledore is not so much a character as a plot device. Without his varied and sundry idiocies and inconsistencies, the whole story would fail to happen. Which is why the whole “He’s really gay” thing grates. Without Dumbledore, the story can’t work; he’s an integral part to it, and the things he does are just hand-waved contrivances.
Rowling is not, I fear, a very good writer. Edgar Bulwer-Lytton did a lot of things better than she did, but they’re both extremely popular in their era, and I fear, doomed to later generations disdaining them, despite the odd turn of phrase they came up with still being in use.
Also, Fraser… You’re reading into what I wrote, which I’ve pointed out again and again. I don’t have a “thing” about gays, per se, just the demonstrative transgressive types that are gay more to piss people off and get back at mommy and daddy than because they’re genuinely attracted to their own sex. Keep your bedroom business to yourself, and I really don’t care what you do behind closed doors with consenting partners. I don’t even care if you make a pass at me… So long as you take a polite “No” for an answer and move on.
My real problem with all this crap is what I’ve seen going on over the course of my life. Thirty years ago, it was all “Just let us have marriage…”, and “There is no ‘slippery slope’, we just want to be like everyone else…”
Take a long, hard look around you: Do you see where else that camel’s nose has led the camel? The damn tent is draped around it, now, as we see the transgressive transsexual types demanding the right to recruit kids into their various cults of deviancy and misery, making it illegal for parents to even know what is going on in the schools where these freaks have taken jobs. That’s the end stage of “gay marriage”, apparently: Anything goes. They’re even agitating to legalize “minor attracted persons”, where once we excoriated pedophiles and drove them from the public square.
Leave. The. Kids. Alone. How much is that to ask? Navigating your way through puberty and into adulthood is hard enough, without a horde of sexually-obsessed nutters warping your minds and attitudes about it all.
And, from the evidence I see around me? The historical perspective? I don’t think you can separate the nutter from the “differently inclined”, because you accept the latter? You get the former, right along with them. There’s some percentage of “safe” transsexuals you could let into the girl’s locker rooms of the world, and not have any issues. Unfortunately, there are a significant number that are nuts, or just plain perverts with a dodge to get them places where they want to be. You can’t separate them, because the only place where they’re apparent is inside their own minds. And, sometimes, I don’t doubt that they really don’t know their own minds.
Here’s a bitter truth: You cannot warp society around the needs of the deviant minority, whether you’re talking gays, transsexuals, or hypersexual heteros like the Hugh Hefner’s of the world. That does not work, because once you accommodate them, the whole shaky edifice becomes all that much more unstable. Society must, in the final analysis, bias towards normalcy and normal people doing normal things to form stable families with stable home environments for the kids. You don’t do that? You don’t survive as a society. Period. You can have your edge cases, and still get by, but the evidence before us, dare we look, is that this course we’re on isn’t working. And, that’s not a thing of virtue or vice; that’s a fact. Take the weighting off of it, and just evaluate: Does it work? If not, why the hell are we doing it? To make some nutcase happy, like that fatass “influencer” who wants to remake the world’s infrastructure to support her lard-ass size and unhealthy obsession with food?
Lots of parallels, there: “Oh, I don’t fit in hotel hallways; rebuild the world so my 400lb obesity can fit… Accomodate ME!” she demands. The sexual deviants are doing the precise same thing, with similar rationales.
Accommodating the edge cases is what kills a civilization. The bias should be towards the functional center of things, not out on the peripheries where it all gets weird.
Aw, c’mon. I could write fanfic following Moby Dick and make Ahab a warm and loving flower child. If you limit yourself to what Rowling wrote, Dumbledore was not as you describe. 😉
He’s pretty much as I describe, however. A living plot device disguised as a character. Most of the books wouldn’t happen absent his deus ex machina actions and varied stupidities/inconsistencies. He’s pretty much a fictionalized Jamie Gorelick: Either the unluckiest official in wizardom, or actively on the other side. How much of what happens to Harry comes down to outright abuse by someone who should be looking after him, but instead uses him as a tool?
Ain’t nothing about Dumbledore real, or well-written. He isn’t a complex character; he does things in the books because the idiotic plot demands it.
You want good writing in the magical fantasy realm, Dianne Wynne Jones comes to mind, or Naomi Novik. The whole Scholomance cycle is a much better, more well-written take on the “wizarding school” genre.
I read Rowley, TBH, and I cannot see how the hell she got so popular, absent a pact with Satan himself. She surely hit the sweet spot, culturally and historically. Any other point, any other circumstances? She’d have never done as well.
Moby Dick? Isn’t that a disease?
Seriously, fanfic authors end up creating a fanon out of the canon. It’s a realm of possibilities, much larger than the original story and not necessarily that accurate a translation. Sometimes flame wars start between two camps who see the original differently. (There’s one fandom where I’ve never read the original – most readers seem to agree it’s magnificent but horribly grimdark. I enjoy the fics that try to tame the original. There’s another with wars between those who see slapstick, and those who see real stick.)
This particular topic in Samizdata is coming closer to a flame war than I’d prefer – and I have a dog in this fight. The world is filled with ordinary people going about their lives. Most of them are reasonable (if only by the standards of their own societies) but some of them are perverts of one kind or another. And if they think it safe, the perverts make a fuss about their particular perversion, and the people who dislike it make their own fuss. It can be about sexuality, religion, or politics. These days it can even be about the weather. But there’s usually something real to argue about.
I’ve known a lot of gays, lesbians, and trans. Most have been quite ordinary. Some have been obnoxious about it. Some have even squicked me out. But they’re people, and who am I to tell them who they should be? The ones that worry me are the ones that want to tell me who I should be. Even worse are the ones that try to tell me who I’m not allowed to be.
Right now that’s the Left. Trans is just one of their issues.
OMG, way to miss the point. It doesn’t matter what your opinion of Dumbledore specifically is — I too was simply using him as a plot device in my interminable commenting. The point, as should have been fairly obvious, is that the vast majority of gay people are just ordinary joes or janes going about their business, rather than the evil deviants that Kirk would have us believe. And if you think, as he seems to, that the HP novels are “porn” simply because they include a gay character, without even a direct mention of his sexuality, then I think you have a pretty low standard for what constitutes porn. If you google “porn” you should find some more realistic and on point examples of what could reasonably be called “porn”.
I find it a bit hard to believe that the rest of the commentariat here, most of whom I have grown to respect, are not more horrified by some of the loathsome views Kirk is spouting here.
Ellen: “I’ve known a lot of gays, lesbians, and trans. Most have been quite ordinary. Some have been obnoxious about it.”
We heteros seem to have our own obnoxious cohort in that same regard. There’s no monopoly.
Fraser Orr: “I find it a bit hard to believe that the rest of the commentariat here, most of whom I have grown to respect, are not more horrified by some of the loathsome views Kirk is spouting here.”
Hey, I tried. 😉
Fraser: I wasn’t missing the point. I was trying to divert it’s inexorable advance to a less sensitive region. And to remind you that perverts come in more than just sexual varieties. If you find the abyss staring at you, stop staring into it.
Well, one is known by one’s detractors. Apparently, it’s “loathsome” to want the kids left the hell alone, and for the whole alphabet-soup group of sexually-obsessed to start demonstrating some damn restraint with their gratifications.
It’s no damn accident that all of this began back in the “good old days” of the so-called “sexual revolution”. That wasn’t a revolution so much as it was a coup against normalcy.
We can see what the wages of all that turned out to be. None of the current set of social ills “just happened”; they were made to happen, because the people behind the changes believed in nothing other than pleasing themselves as best they could, which they thought could be done by giving into the shallow pleasures of sex of all kinds and varieties.
Little problem with that: You can see what happens when you let the freak flag fly: The freaks become emboldened, and start agitating for more and more freakish behavior to be normed. We were all assured, were we not, that “gay marriage” was all they wanted, the freaks. Let them have that “little thing”, and let them be “just like everyone else”, and it would all be well.
(“Minor-attracted person”, anyone? Care to take bets on where that’s going, in ten years or so?)
Didn’t happen that way, now did it? Did anyone imagine we were going to have publicly-funded schools staffed by people who believe it is their right to override parental guidance, and who think it moral to conceal the mental health issues of those parent’s own children? Do any of you remember hearing that, as a codicil to the whole “Let’s mainstream teh gay” thing?
I did not. I bought the bullshit, believed in the “equal rights” deal. Not any more; at this point, I’m well convinced that there are good and sufficient reasons that the majority of successful societies across human history have mostly suppressed this sort of deviant behavior. It does not work; the majority of the sexually confused are actually mentally ill, and letting them set policy and spread their illness through contagion is utter madness. Especially the trans line of bullshit, because once a child is convinced to transition or “suppress puberty”, it is pretty much over; that human being is removed from ever contributing their genes to the species. Which may not be an altogether bad thing, considering…
End of the day, this sort of thing cannot continue in the face of 1.3 fertility rates, or the sort of criminality becoming common in the school system. You have no doubt heard of the many and sundry crimes of the clergy, but have you ever compared them to the crimes of the teachers in today’s schools? Ever wondered why there’s such a difference between the treatment of clergy and teachers?
Time was, this sort of thing was simply not tolerated, not countenanced. You’d get your ass run out of town on a rail, and blackballed from the profession of teaching for allowing even a hint of sexual anything to leak into the student-teacher relationship. Today? LOL… Everyone just looks the other way, as the Mary Kay Letourneau’s have their way with the Vili Fualaaus of the world. It is all relative; there can be no standards of conduct, because it’s all OK, no matter what, no matter who. Just get your rocks off, however you can–And, never mind how old the vic… Er… “Partner” might be.
And, I’m the loathsome one. Well, I suppose we can tell a good deal about the character of certain people commenting in this thread.
Oh, and as an example of where that supposedly non-existent “slippery slope” has led us?
The individual discussed in this post is now someone cited by mainstream journalists and seen by many as being more properly “correct” than my loathsome ilk:
https://www.jamesesses.com/p/no-puberty-blockers-are-not-the-same
Did any of you reading this today expect that by giving in and allowing the mainstreaming of all this deviancy was going to lead here? Because, that’s precisely what we were all doing, sad though it is to recognize.
I regret ever having made those arguments or supported those causes, seeing now that there are no limits, and that there is indeed a slippery slope under all our feet. I have no idea where this is all going to lead to eventually, but I fear that the pendulum is nearing the apex of its swing towards license; the backswing is going to be fast, hard, and go a lot further than anyone anticipates. It certainly won’t stop at the “sane middle”, that’s for sure; as far off center as the various nutters have pushed it, we’re going to be lucky if we don’t see people nodding along with pogroms and whatever other nastiness the real sickoes of society come up with. Most of whom are currently engaged in furthering the LGBTWTFBBQ “program”, at the moment. If you think they won’t turn on a dime, and turn on the people they’re currently lionizing, you haven’t read much of history or studied that sort of human being very much.
This is all just the same “race-and-sex-realism” that you get on Stormfront.org. They’re all looking for that bloody backlash against sinfulness too. Blacks, gays, lefthanders, people who don’t like chocolate – they’re all just degrading real humanity, right?
@Kirk
Well, one is known by one’s detractors. Apparently, it’s “loathsome” to want the kids left the hell alone, and for the whole alphabet-soup group of sexually-obsessed to start demonstrating some damn restraint with their gratifications.
Yes, because that is EXACTLY what i said… sheesh.
@Ellen, I’m sorry if I misinterpreted your intentions. Cooling things down by redirection probably was a good strategy, one we’d all have been better off wish.
@bobby, yeah, I was thinking about your comments calling out this crap before, so, sorry if I painted you with too broad a brush.
bobby b raved:
Ah, yes… The classic ad hominem attack. You don’t like what is said, so you basically bring in Hitler via Stormfront.
Well, bright boy, good luck dealing with the consequences of your ideas.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12590641/community-activist-stabbed-death-unprovoked-attack.html
https://www.inquirer.com/crime/josh-kruger-killed-point-breeze-shooting-philadelphia-journalist-20231002.html#loaded
You claim to be on the right side of history, and paint anyone pointing out the actual reality being brought into being as being bigoted racyist racists, because they object to the social order around them being torn down.
So, tell me, Mr. Imsosmart: What the hell has all your sweetness and light actually wrought? When I was a kid, Portland, Oregon was the Rose City, a really cool place to live and work in. It was a regional economic center, had good civic life, and you didn’t have to worry about stepping in human feces on sidewalks. It was a nice little city.
Then, people like yourself got put in charge.
People with the opposite sort of ideas you blithely group with neo-Nazis took over, and ran that city, indeed, the entire region, right into the ground. And, I’m “loathsome” for observing that fact, pointing it out, and decrying it?
Ya got anything better? Anywhere your vaunted ideals have actually fucking WORKED?
I’m ever so tired of your smarmy virtuousness. You say one thing, as though you weren’t on board with this crap, but the demonstrated fact of what you write is quite the opposite. You support what’s going on, in the name of “social justice and the oppressed”, failing to note that everywhere they’ve done that, social ruin follows. Can you name one polity, anywhere in the West, where the local community is better off for having embraced this line of bullshit? Where life is better? Where you don’t have to stumble over drugged-out derelicts who’ve shit all over the public streets our taxes pay for? Where the crime isn’t insanely rampant, and rising?
None of this crap is working. It hasn’t ever worked, and anyone who sits here and says otherwise while calling those who object to it effective fascists and neo-Nazis? I’d say that you’re clearly indicating where your true beliefs lie, despite copious protestations.
Face it, halfwits of the left: You had your revolution, won it, and now you have to live in the aftermath. You now have to make it work. Enjoy it; you won the argument, and we will now see the fruits of your supposed brilliant thoughts and changes.
Is it any wonder that people like myself look at what you’ve accomplished, and consider you dolts and vandals?
Like I have said many times: I once bought into the whole concept sold us as children, the full meal deal of leftist liberal ideology. Thing is, though? I pay attention; I observe. Long, sad experience has taught me that the wages of sin ain’t success and a decent life. You don’t get to ignore the realities, as many are now finding out. Human beings really don’t behave the way any of your lot fantasize. You dismantled the guardrails, and now sit here criticizing people who’re saying that was a bad, bad idea, while watching traffic whizz off the corners and into the trees. So be it. Just don’t make the mistake of believing that you’re somehow immune to all the effects coming all our ways. The folks at the head of this post did…
One common aspect of Autism Spectrum Disorder is impulsiveness. Another is what engineers call “bang-bang” control (the heater is either ON or OFF, there is no in between). Many on the Spectrum do not have smooth access to their own emotions. In my case, I often feel very little emotion, or a LOT… which is where the term “bang-bang” comes in. When I feel a lot, it is a LOT, and I have to watch what I say or do in that state. It can lead me to writing a blog posting… which is where I need to stand back, reel myself back in, and decide whether or not I really should hit the Post Comment button. Often, NOT is the right answer. (Ironically, the above might be arguably applicable to this posting!)
@Kirk
Then, people like yourself got put in charge.
It seems to me that you have this view that all people who disagree with you are the same and have the same views. This is a perfect example of this. To compare BobbyB to the people who run Portland is so self evidently ridiculous that it can only come from dishonesty, ignorance or stupidity. And I don’t think you are stupid by any means. The only thing BobbyB and the people in charge of Portland have in common is that they are both of the homo sapiens species. Not much else as far as I can see.
The ability to recognize that although guy A might disagree with you and gal B might disagree with you does not mean that guy A agrees with gal B, or that any of the consequences of gal B’s choices are the responsibility of guy A is basic tool of logic. But deliberately blurring the situation saves you from having to defend your actual disagreements with either. Which is a very effective rhetorical strategy — congrats. It buries your horrible views on homosexuality — that they are deviants and writing about them is somehow porn — under a blanket of justifiable disgust at what is happening in the world, even though the two things are completely unrelated.
I disagree with PdH’s views on the Ukraine conflict. But I recognize that he has honest and respectable reasons for thinking the way he does. And even though I disagree on that point I don’t think he is responsible for other ills in the world such as the destruction of free speech in America. On the contrary, he is self evidently a decent, honorable guy and a passionate defender of free speech.
I often disagree with Ellen on stuff, but I still think she has a lot of good things to say, and I recognize that her life experience and social group give her a perspective that I could never have — and that I find interesting.
Even Kirk, whose posts are so hostile, doctrinaire and often express some rather horrible views, I recognize he has served in the military, which I haven’t. And so I often find his comments on that subject insightful and illuminating. I have never, as he accuses me of, called him loathsome, I have called some of his views loathsome — because they are. I haven’t met the guy, so I have no idea what he is like as a person.
I recognize Kirk that your rhetorical strategy is often attrition and exhaustion of your interlocutors, so I’ll leave it at that.
Fraser, both you and bobby b instinctively rise to oppose the idea that any of the liberal catechism could possibly be wrong. I’m “loathsome” or my ideas are, because they’re in opposition to that which you obviously believe real hard in.
I’ve yet to see any evidence in the world around me that any of that crap even approaches a state of even semi-functionality. For me, it’s like watching someone I’m sharing a lifeboat with plunging needles into the air chambers, while you and bobby b tell me that they’re not only not doing that, they’re fully entitled to do so…
Take a look around you, without blinders: Has anything influenced by the liberal social ideas of the last century gotten better? Oh, sure… We shut down the mental hospitals, where we warehoused the dysfunctional and cared for them (mostly…) humanely. We replaced those with open-air sewers in our public spaces, and this is a net gain for humanity?
We recast all the social roles and conventions: Are “the people” benefiting, or did we just make them all a hell of a lot unhappier?
I was told all of these things that “used to be” were unfair, unequal, and that they needed to change. I was on board with that, right up until I started paying attention to what was actually happening. All y’all right-thinking people told me that “affirmative action” was necessary to make up for things, but what you didn’t tell anyone was that you meant to do it by simply reversing the polarity of racism. I spent a career working for the US government under this regime, watching totally unqualified minorities promoted over fully qualified non-minorities, simply because of racial background. I observed and experienced having those same minorities cry “racism” whenever they were held accountable for their actions, which generally got them out of whatever punishment they had coming. I observed non-minorities still being held to standard, and receiving heavy punishment for lesser offenses…
I’ve watched the crime rates and general amount of violence increase, along with racial animosity, and I’m still told by you lot that this is all my fault. News flash: Most of my ancestors not only did not own slaves, they supported abolition and fought in the Civil War with the intent to end it. Yet, I’m blamed because… Why? Not sure; but that’s the way it worked out: Blood guilt.
So, you’ll have to pardon me for pointing out the “loathsome facts” that your ideas didn’t work, aren’t working, and are in the end stages of failure. How long it is going to take for people to recognize that fact? No damn idea, but I’m not planning on shutting up about the things I see, no matter how “loathsome” you might find them.
I think it is actually rather more loathsome to remain willfully blind to all of this, and continue to deny factual evidence. The whole idiot concept of “decriminalization” and our supposed “carceral state” is about to be exposed for the fraud that it is. Most inmates in prison should be there, and mercy for them is utter lunacy. Yet, that is what I continually see being defended and excused. The entire package of ideas which are apparently “not loathsome” include things like enabling the sterilization of young children in the name of “gender identity” and releasing men like Jason Dean Billingsley.
Who was, I feel the need to point out, let into the apartment building by the very woman he murdered, likely because of her inability to correctly identify potential threats like Billingsley. She had a lifetime of people telling her the things you and bobby b espouse, and believed in them. Right up until those trusting beliefs quite literally killed her. She literally opened the door to her murderer and rapist. Why? That’s a question for the ages, but I know the answer to part of it: She was just like I was in my twenties, a fully-indoctrinated little fool who trustingly bought into the new-age bullshit.
To paraphrase one of my black co-workers, observing a truck that quite literally fell apart when started one morning: “Sh*t ain’t working, yo…”
And, it isn’t. All I ask is that people quit peeing on my back, and telling me that it’s raining, and that I’m a racist because I think it is piss and that everyone ought to be held to the same standards, everywhere. Unless, of course, you mean for me to be able to talk to random 13-year old girls about their sex lives. Not that I want to, but if it’s good for the transsexual teacher, then it ought to be good for me in principle, right? Right?
Very insightful, actually. Good advice. I shall take it. 😉
Myno:
I myself identify as an Aspie, like Elon Musk.
(I was not diagnosed, don’t know about Musk.)
The reason i identify as such is that i must make a conscious effort to see things from the point of view of other people … But i must add that my condition has much improved after i improved my diet.
As for bang-bang control: my change of diet has almost completely changed me in this respect. I can now claim to be a true Stoic, almost always choosing intentional action over impulsive reaction.
But i might still post a comment that i’ll later regret, especially after enjoying beer and whisky.
Vis-a-vis the innocent and entirely innocuous LGBTWTFBBQ crowd:
https://notthebee.com/article/the-lgbt-crowd-seems-really-upset-about-florida-giving-the-death-penalty-for-child-rape
Do read the whole thing, and pay attention to all the gay commentators that are highlighted as protesting that this law is going to kill gays and transgenders…
This is why I no longer support gay marriage, or much of anything “gay”. You don’t see or hear a single “sane” gay person objecting to this sort of thing, and you have to wonder just why that is. I mean, all normal right-thinking people are against child rape, right? Right? Why would you be concerned about this, unless… Waitaminute… Yeah. Huh. Go figure…
They’re going to be advocating for the legalization of pedophilia, or at least, effective decriminalization of it. Mark my words. And, to think, it all started with the harmless “Let’s give gays the right to marry…”
Where it is going to end? You tell me. What are you willing to tolerate, you loathsome normies?
Ah, yes… More evidence for loathsomeness, objecting to such things as this:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/10/07/lgbtq-public-school-groomer-you-have-to-catch-kids-when-theyre-starting-puberty-n1733148
Read through that, if you can stomach it, and ask yourself why you ever thought it would stop at gay marriage? I know I did, and I admit I was wrong. There was a slope, it was slippery, and we’re now in the process of careening off the end of it.
Tolerance? Love the “other”? Great ideas. Now, how about “the others” start leaving the kids the hell alone?
There’s a reason these creatures were once what they were, and you’re seeing it now. There is absolutely zero justification for this kind of thing, whatsoever. That HiTOPS program has no other purpose than indoctrination, if you bother to read the material. It’s not just tolerance; it’s conditioning.
You also have this crap:
https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1708904438356705734
16-year-old on 9-year-old girl, years of abuse from 2017 to 2020. Workhouse and probation, no prison.
This is from Hennepin County, Minnesota. Where the unloathsome rule…
Like where this is going? Prepare for more of it.